Online discussion forums, such as www.topix.net, vividly illustrate basic rhetorical concepts such as stasis theory, commonplaces, and discourse community. For this classroom activity, first-year composition students used stasis theory to analyze an online discussion and then figure out how the discussion could profitably move forward. Stasis theory is grounded in rhetorical purpose (Eckart & Stewart), helps students assess the completeness of an argument (Fulkerson), helps relate arguments to particular audiences (Fahnstock & Secor), and is well-suited to nonlinear online discussions (Carter). However, the goal of this assignment is not for students to classify every single comment in the discussion, or to get the stasis levels “right.” The goals are:
To familiarize students with how stasis levels look in “real life”
To demonstrate that rhetorical theory can illuminate how arguments fail or succeed to resolve an issue for a particular audience
To determine which stasis levels should be developed in a paper on this topic
Carter, Locke. “Argument in Hypertext: Writing Strategies and the Problem of Order in a Nonsequential World.” Computers and Composition 20
Eckhardt, Caroline D., and David H. Stewart. “Towards a Functional Taxonomy of Composition.” College Composition and Communication 30 (1979): 338-34. Print.
Fahnestock, Jeanne, and Marie Secor. “The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument.” Written Communication 5 (1988): 427-443. Print.
Fulkerson, Richard. “Technical Logic, Comp-Logic, and the Teaching of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 39 (1988): 436-452.
(2003): 3-22. Print.
Supplies:
A printout of a sample online discussion, with enough copies that each group can get a single copy
Tape and a copy with the comments cut apart for easy arranging on the whiteboard
Brief definition of each stasis level written on the whiteboard
1. Identify the specific issue being addressed in this discussion. State that issue in a single-sentence question. e.g., “When Home Depot fired an employee for wearing a button that said “One nation under God, Indivisible,” did that firing constitute harmful religious discrimination?”
II. In small groups:
1.
2. Locate comments that duplicate or reiterate each other. Select one representative comment from each group of duplicates. Set the other duplicates aside.
3. Label each comment as one of the five stasis levels or “other” (we used Fahnstock & Secor's five-level stases):
Fact: Did something happen? What happened? Definition: What kind of thing was it? Cause: What caused it? What are its effects? Value: Is it good or bad? Action: What should we do next? Other: Anything that doesn’t seem to fit the other levels.
4. Review your “other” category. How would you characterize these comments—tangents, logical fallacies, commonplaces? If they seem to sort into groups, then go ahead and sort them.
III. As a class:
5. Create an idea map of the arguments made at each stasis level. These arguments will refer specifically to the issue under discussion. (If there’s not enough time, just quote representative arguments.)
6. What sort of audience would the ideas in this map appeal to? What points of view (stakeholders) have been represented? Add these to your map.
7. Identify any gaps revealed by your analysis. Are arguments generally made at the same stasis level or are people arguing past each other? How could each level be more fully explored?
8. Discuss: If you were going to write an argument on this topic for a UCF student audience, how would this idea map need to change?
Reflections:
I chose the discussion topic for my class because so many online discussions have a poor signal:noise ratio. However, students could probably find their own discussions once they know what to look for--assuming they are willing to spend the time it takes to find a good one. Discussions that work well are
Not explicitly political (believe me, politics will come up anyway)
Related to policy (because then you’re more likely to see a full range of stasis levels in the discussion)
Moderate length (at least 25 comments, not more than 200 comments)
Next semester, I'll keep the in-class activity, because students found it challenging and I think they would need the run-through in order to do this sort of analysis on their own. However, I'll also assign them to do this same kind of analysis on a different discussion as homework. They can use the analysis to help them develop their own ideas for a paper on a related topic.
This sort of activity could also help showcase other rhetorical concepts. For example, students could think about discourse community by comparing this discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy blog (a legal blog with a libertarian viewpoint) to similar discussions on news sites (e.g., Atlanta channel 11, Buffalo channel 4). Or, students could examine ways that online commenters establish their ethos (e.g., through registering with the site, linking to external sources, responding intelligently to someone else, using inflammatory or reasonable language). Or, students could look to see which stakeholders viewpoints are represented in a given discussion. Or, students could look to see how commonplaces are used in the discussion (not just political commonplaces, but internet commonplaces such as Godwin's law). Or, students could assess the value of acknowledging someone else's points in a discussion. And so on.
Assessment Criteria:
Although I didn’t grade this classroom activity, I was looking for evidence of the following:
Stasis terms used correctly (students demonstrate knowledge of what the terms mean)
Comments fit their categories (everyone might not agree on the interpretation but the interpretation is plausible)
Unhelpful comments are described/grouped in a meaningful way
Any gaps in the discussion identified
Thoughts about what to do next? How could these arguments be developed (or not) into a meaningful persuasive paper?
Sample Response:
During class, we labeled most of the comments in the Volokh Conspiracy discussion, finding comments at every stasis level. A few of the comments were difficult to classify--I reiterated that the goal wasn't to get the labels "right" but to see how stasis theory gave us a new lens for understanding argument. We tried to achieve consensus, and at times agreed to disagree on labels. In the online forum, disagreement was concentrated in Fact, Cause, and Value levels. The class concluded that it could be difficult to resolve all the disagreements of Fact and Cause. We could seek out additional reporting on the event, but the news reports might not answer all our questions. We could independently verify some of the fact claims (e.g., do Home Depot employees regularly wear personal pins, or not? Do new Home Depot employees receive instruction about pins and if so, what is it?). But we probably couldn't resolve issues of cause (Did the Home Depot manager use the employee's pin as a pretense when the real "offense" was Bible reading?) Instead, if we were going to write about the topic in a paper, it might be better to rely on a disinterested account of the facts and continue the discussion at a different stasis level, such as Value (Is it good for Home Depot to enforce such restrictions on employee dress?)
Out of curiosity, we skimmed through one of the news site discussions on the same topic, and we noticed a few differences. News site commenters seemed to make more action claims than VC commenters (e.g., "All Christians should boycott Home Depot again and sell all their HD stock," "Laws should be passed to protect the right of Christians to wear religiously themed patriotic pins"). Perhaps the attorneys who frequent the VC are more likely to support the legal status quo. News site commenters seemed less polite and more repetitive. Off-topic comments at the VC were mostly tangents (e.g., a side discussion of the meaning of the word "indivisible" in the Pledge of Allegiance), with only a few insults ("The adults here are talking"). And news sites tended to focus on the customer perspective, while the VC discussion mostly focused on an employer perspective. The class felt that a paper on this topic for a UCF student audience should focus primarily on the employee perspective, since so many students work at jobs that require uniforms, including restrictions on "flair."
About the Assignment:
Online discussion forums, such as www.topix.net, vividly illustrate basic rhetorical concepts such as stasis theory, commonplaces, and discourse community. For this classroom activity, first-year composition students used stasis theory to analyze an online discussion and then figure out how the discussion could profitably move forward. Stasis theory is grounded in rhetorical purpose (Eckart & Stewart), helps students assess the completeness of an argument (Fulkerson), helps relate arguments to particular audiences (Fahnstock & Secor), and is well-suited to nonlinear online discussions (Carter). However, the goal of this assignment is not for students to classify every single comment in the discussion, or to get the stasis levels “right.” The goals are:Carter, Locke. “Argument in Hypertext: Writing Strategies and the Problem of Order in a Nonsequential World.” Computers and Composition 20
Eckhardt, Caroline D., and David H. Stewart. “Towards a Functional Taxonomy of Composition.” College Composition and Communication 30 (1979): 338-34. Print.
Fahnestock, Jeanne, and Marie Secor. “The Stases in Scientific and Literary Argument.” Written Communication 5 (1988): 427-443. Print.
Fulkerson, Richard. “Technical Logic, Comp-Logic, and the Teaching of Writing.” College Composition and Communication 39 (1988): 436-452.
(2003): 3-22. Print.
Supplies:
Instructions:
I. As a class:
1. Identify the specific issue being addressed in this discussion. State that issue in a single-sentence question. e.g., “When Home Depot fired an employee for wearing a button that said “One nation under God, Indivisible,” did that firing constitute harmful religious discrimination?”
II. In small groups:
1.2. Locate comments that duplicate or reiterate each other. Select one representative comment from each group of duplicates. Set the other duplicates aside.
3. Label each comment as one of the five stasis levels or “other” (we used Fahnstock & Secor's five-level stases):
Fact: Did something happen? What happened?
Definition: What kind of thing was it?
Cause: What caused it? What are its effects?
Value: Is it good or bad?
Action: What should we do next?
Other: Anything that doesn’t seem to fit the other levels.
4. Review your “other” category. How would you characterize these comments—tangents, logical fallacies, commonplaces? If they seem to sort into groups, then go ahead and sort them.
III. As a class:
5. Create an idea map of the arguments made at each stasis level. These arguments will refer specifically to the issue under discussion. (If there’s not enough time, just quote representative arguments.)
6. What sort of audience would the ideas in this map appeal to? What points of view (stakeholders) have been represented? Add these to your map.
7. Identify any gaps revealed by your analysis. Are arguments generally made at the same stasis level or are people arguing past each other? How could each level be more fully explored?
8. Discuss: If you were going to write an argument on this topic for a UCF student audience, how would this idea map need to change?
Reflections:
I chose the discussion topic for my class because so many online discussions have a poor signal:noise ratio. However, students could probably find their own discussions once they know what to look for--assuming they are willing to spend the time it takes to find a good one. Discussions that work well areNext semester, I'll keep the in-class activity, because students found it challenging and I think they would need the run-through in order to do this sort of analysis on their own. However, I'll also assign them to do this same kind of analysis on a different discussion as homework. They can use the analysis to help them develop their own ideas for a paper on a related topic.
This sort of activity could also help showcase other rhetorical concepts. For example, students could think about discourse community by comparing this discussion at the Volokh Conspiracy blog (a legal blog with a libertarian viewpoint) to similar discussions on news sites (e.g., Atlanta channel 11, Buffalo channel 4). Or, students could examine ways that online commenters establish their ethos (e.g., through registering with the site, linking to external sources, responding intelligently to someone else, using inflammatory or reasonable language). Or, students could look to see which stakeholders viewpoints are represented in a given discussion. Or, students could look to see how commonplaces are used in the discussion (not just political commonplaces, but internet commonplaces such as Godwin's law). Or, students could assess the value of acknowledging someone else's points in a discussion. And so on.
Assessment Criteria:
Although I didn’t grade this classroom activity, I was looking for evidence of the following:Sample Response:
During class, we labeled most of the comments in the Volokh Conspiracy discussion, finding comments at every stasis level. A few of the comments were difficult to classify--I reiterated that the goal wasn't to get the labels "right" but to see how stasis theory gave us a new lens for understanding argument. We tried to achieve consensus, and at times agreed to disagree on labels. In the online forum, disagreement was concentrated in Fact, Cause, and Value levels. The class concluded that it could be difficult to resolve all the disagreements of Fact and Cause. We could seek out additional reporting on the event, but the news reports might not answer all our questions. We could independently verify some of the fact claims (e.g., do Home Depot employees regularly wear personal pins, or not? Do new Home Depot employees receive instruction about pins and if so, what is it?). But we probably couldn't resolve issues of cause (Did the Home Depot manager use the employee's pin as a pretense when the real "offense" was Bible reading?) Instead, if we were going to write about the topic in a paper, it might be better to rely on a disinterested account of the facts and continue the discussion at a different stasis level, such as Value (Is it good for Home Depot to enforce such restrictions on employee dress?)Out of curiosity, we skimmed through one of the news site discussions on the same topic, and we noticed a few differences. News site commenters seemed to make more action claims than VC commenters (e.g., "All Christians should boycott Home Depot again and sell all their HD stock," "Laws should be passed to protect the right of Christians to wear religiously themed patriotic pins"). Perhaps the attorneys who frequent the VC are more likely to support the legal status quo. News site commenters seemed less polite and more repetitive. Off-topic comments at the VC were mostly tangents (e.g., a side discussion of the meaning of the word "indivisible" in the Pledge of Allegiance), with only a few insults ("The adults here are talking"). And news sites tended to focus on the customer perspective, while the VC discussion mostly focused on an employer perspective. The class felt that a paper on this topic for a UCF student audience should focus primarily on the employee perspective, since so many students work at jobs that require uniforms, including restrictions on "flair."
Contact:
Beth Rapp YoungU of Central Florida, Orlando
byoung@mail.ucf.edu